Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS). Data from 2011 is used for Canada, South Africa, Malaysia, Algeria, Barbados, Botswana, Brazil, Cameroon, Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, Gambia, Greece, Iceland, Israel, Liechtenstein, Mali, Mozambique, Myanmar, Nepal, Oman, Uganda, Uzbekistan, Yemen. 2010 figures are used for Egypt, China and Morocco. All other statistics taken from 2012. Where countries are grey, no data is available.

The statistics refer to students who have crossed a national border to study, or are enrolled in a distance learning programme abroad. These students are not residents or citizens of the country where they study. Both part-time, full-time, undergraduate and postgraduate students are included.

Students who are under short-term, for-credit study and exchange programmes that last less than a full academic year are not included.

Last month, I wrote about the fun and the pitfalls of viral maps, a feature that included 88 super-simple maps of my own creation. As a follow-up, I’m writing up short items on some of those maps, walking through how I created them and how they succumb to (and hopefully overcome) the shortfalls of viral cartography.

One of the most interesting data sets for aspiring mapmakers is the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. Among other things, that survey includes a detailed look at the languages spoken in American homes. All the maps below are based on the responses to this survey. For instance, Mandarin, Cantonese, and other Chinese dialects are separated as different responses in the data and were treated as different languages when constructing these maps. If those languages had been grouped together, the marking of many states would change. In addition, Hawaiian is listed as a Pacific Island language, so following the ACS classifications, it was not included in the Native American languages map. The spelling of each language is based on the language of the ACS.